


After

by Twisted_Mind



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alpha Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hale Family Feels, Healing, Other, POV Laura, POV Laura Hale, The Hale Fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 17:25:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12281088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twisted_Mind/pseuds/Twisted_Mind
Summary: She cries, because she feels like her insides have been scooped out, because she has no idea what she’s supposed to do with Derek, because she can’t stand to lose her uncle, too. Not when he’s righthere, right in front of her and yet so painfully out of reach.





	After

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to red_crate, for helping me plot this out and organize my thoughts when this was a wisp of an idea, and to KashiZii, who let me break her heart with this to help me get it finished. Much love to you both. 
> 
> This one is heavy, darlings. It's quite the emotional gut-punch, so be careful with yourselves.

 

0

She has to pull over when it hits her. She thinks she screams. The pain is impossible, too much to manage, too big to manoeuvre around. She has no idea what’s going on, only that it feels like she won’t survive it.

 

3 hours after

She wants to cry, but the tears won’t come. Her chest feels hollow, her brain, broken. The inherited power in her blood howls, and she can barely hear past the grief. She wishes she’d been able to push through the pain, like Uncle Peter did. Maybe if he’d had help, the others would’ve survived. Maybe he would’ve.

She gives her statement to the police on autopilot. She doesn’t know what happened. She was out running errands. (She was screaming and useless while they were dying.)

 

5 hours after

She’s got custody of Derek. She has no fucking clue what to do with him, because she can’t even legally drink yet, but she has him. He’s curled up in the motel bed, not sleeping. He won’t speak. She doesn’t blame him.

 

19 hours after

It’s 8am and she doesn’t want to be here, but she doesn’t have any choice. The police need her to identify the bodies. Derek’s with her because she’s terrified to let him out of her sight, but she can’t—“Der-bear, I want you to wait out here for me, okay?”

He looks up at her, his big multi-coloured eyes wide and glassy. She cups his face, kisses his forehead. “I have to do this, but you don’t need to see it.” He nods, ducking his head like that means she won’t smell the salt of his tears.

She goes in, confirms the names of seven packmates. Mother-Alpha Talia Hale. Father-Second David Hale. Aunt-beta Brie. Uncle-beta Rob. Twin cousin-cubs Cass and Carl. Brother-cub Leo.

She clings to Derek after, and cries. She’s supposed to be Alpha, but she lets her little brother hold her up while she cries and cries and cries. He nuzzles into her neck and holds her as tightly as his sixteen-year-old body knows how.

She doesn’t tell him they haven’t found Cora. She doesn’t want to give him false hope.

 

21 hours after

She doesn’t know if it’s the grief or how painfully young she is that’s making this so impossible to understand. Mr. Sloan smiles at her. It’s kind, and he smells of nothing but compassion and muted grief.

She takes a deep breath, squeezes Derek’s hand, and shakes her head. “Can you explain it again, please?”

The lawyer nods. “Of course.”

 

24 hours after

She doesn’t know how to feel, that Mom and Dad had plans in place in case something ever happened. Pre-made funeral arrangements, life insurance, other relatives—other packs—to reach out to.

She’s not ready for any of this. Not for the funeral—she hates that she’s grateful the bodies haven’t been released to her yet, that there needs to be an investigation before she has to say goodbye to her family, her pack—not for the insurance paperwork, and she’s never going to be ready to reach out to other packs to tell them she’s the Alpha and why.

Derek still hasn’t spoken. It’s starting to scare her a little. The only reason she isn’t more afraid is because he curled up with her, last night, his face pressed to her belly as he sobbed.

 

27 hours after

Derek had wanted to be alone for a while, so she’s at the station without him. One of the deputies—an older man, with salt and pepper hair and a fake smile—is offering condolences. As if that excuses what he’s told her.

“An _accident_?”

“That’s what the preliminary report says, miss. The good news is, once all the paperwork’s in, you’ll be able to bury your folks.”

“You honestly think this was an accident?” she growls. It’s enough to spook the deputy.

“Look, miss, it’s awful what happened to your family, but—”

She stands, saying nothing. Her control must slip a little, though, because the deputy takes a step back, going white. She stares him down for a minute, listening to the rapid beat of his frightened heart, and then she walks out of the station.

The fire was a lot of things, but an accident isn’t one of them.

 

28 hours after

She ends up in Peter’s room in the ICU. The nurses hadn’t put up a fuss about her seeing a burn victim, and she knows it’s because they don’t expect him to make it. She doesn’t bother trying to restrain her tears as she fights to smell _Uncle Peter_ underneath the scents of hospital antiseptic and cooked meat and her own guilt.

She carefully takes his unmarked hand into her own, tracing her fingertips across the knuckles that taught her how to throw a punch when she was twelve and a boy at school didn’t want to take “no” for an answer, down the fingers that used to comb through her hair when she couldn’t sleep, as her thumb strokes the palm that pulled her pain more times than she could count. It hits her, then, that she needs him. She needs his ability to see a way out, to stay calm when things look bad, his steadiness. She’s barely twenty and she’s lost nearly everyone and Derek is withdrawing and she doesn’t know how to help him because she’s drowning in the same loss he is.

She also, as much as she doesn’t want to admit it, needs the darker side of him that her mother never wanted to acknowledge. The part she was supposed to report on, if she ever saw it. The part of him that taught her how to punch a human and make it _hurt_ without causing suspicious amounts of damage.

She can barely see through her tears at this point, and everything hurts. It hurts so much. It isn’t until she wipes her tears away on her shoulder, unwilling to let go of Uncle Peter, that she sees why.

She’s pulling his pain.

She doesn’t stop, because she doesn’t want to. There’s not a lot she can do for him right now, but this, this is something she _can_ do, so she will. She pushes, drawing more and more from him, gritting her teeth, fangs gnashing as the intensity of what she’s taking forces her shift. She ducks her head, letting her loose hair hide her face from passing hospital staff.

She cries, because she feels like her insides have been scooped out, because she has no idea what she’s supposed to do with Derek, because she can’t stand to lose her uncle, too. Not when he’s right _here_ , right in front of her and yet so painfully out of reach. Her jaw flexes, fangs slicing the inside of her lips as she refuses to let out the scream that’s throbbing in her chest.

When it subsides, she chokes out, “I never wanted this.”

“Wha’ve you gotten yourself into now, pup?”

Her head jerks up at the soft rasp, and she can’t breathe. Uncle Peter is looking at her through one slitted eye, the other still under bandages. She wonders if she’s imagining it and fresh tears spill down her cheeks.

It’s not until the hand she held—Peter’s good one, now—lifts to clumsily cup her jaw that she realizes it’s real. She presses her hand over her uncle’s, and cries like a child.

(She hates how much she’s cried in the last two days, hates that she can’t stop.)

When she manages to rein the tears in, rubbing at her itchy eyes and breath hitching in her chest, he asks again. “What happened, pup?”

She closes her eyes. “There was a fire. Derek wasn’t there. I was out, running errands. I—I was at the morgue this morning.” She has to stop. She feels like she’s about to break apart, and the only thing holding her together is Uncle Peter’s hand on her face. “M-Mom and Dad are gone. So are Uncle Rob and Aunt Brie.”

She stops, not wanting to name the others, because those are the worst, the hardest to process. Uncle Peter notices, and doesn’t let it go. “Did any of the cubs make it out?”

Her face twists as she shakes her head. “They didn’t find Cora’s body, but, the others . . .”

His eye closes too, and the scent of his grief is so strong it’s all she can smell for a moment. She doesn’t know how he pulls it back in. She’s been drowning in hers since she came home to a smoking ruin. “What else do we know?”

She licks her lips, and tastes salt. “Not much. The preliminary report says the fire was an accident, but I don’t—”

“It was no accident.” His face is hard, and she remembers, suddenly, that he was there. That if it _had_ just been an accident, he would have been able to get them out.

“Derek’s not speaking. I don’t—I’m scared, Uncle Peter. I have custody of him, but I just—I don’t, I don’t know how to do this. Any of this.”

“Any of what, sweetheart?” His hand drifts from her jaw to tuck her hair behind her ear.

“A-after Mom . . .”

“The Alpha power passed to you.”

She flinches at the flatness in his voice. “I didn’t want it, I swear. I’m not ready for it,” she pleads, and his expression softens.

“Show me, then.”

She musters up a poor excuse for a smile, and flashes her eyes. When he says nothing, going still, she wonders what else has gone wrong. “What? Uncle Peter?”

He levers himself up on one arm to see her better. “Show me again.”

She obeys, having learned from an early age that when Uncle Peter sounds like that, things are serious and probably also dangerous as hell. He exhales slowly, nodding. “Laura, sweetheart, what did you do?” He looks around and seems to register where he is for the first time. “Why am I in a hospital?”

She stares at her hands. “You were in a coma, Uncle Peter. Between the fire and—the grief,” she pauses, shaking her head. She can’t say it. She doesn’t even want to think about it. She’s lost too many family members already.

“It’s alright, pup. I’m not going anywhere. What happened when you got here?”

 “I was holding your hand, thinking about how much I needed you. I don’t—Derek, and the pack and the funerals, it’s just. I,” she chokes, and stops to breathe. “I was taking your pain, and I thought, well, there’s nothing I can do if—if you were dying, but I could do that. So I pushed, took as much as I could.”

“You healed me.”

Her head snaps back up, and she sees him unwinding the bandages from around his face. There’s scarring, but nowhere near as bad as it should be. And he’ll probably continue to heal over time. “How?”

He gives her an odd look. “Alphas are able to take pain, and, if they so choose, heal a grievously-injured packmate.”

“Why didn’t I know about this?”

He pauses in unbandaging his hand to cup her cheek. “Because, sweetpea, it comes with a cost. You didn’t realize it, but you gave up the Alpha spark.”

“I—what?” Her guts turn to ice and she fumbles a compact from her purse, flashing her eyes to double-check. Their bright gold damns her. “By the moon,” she breathes, “what have I done?”

“Look at me.” She does, vision blurred by panic, and Uncle Peter cups her face between his palms. “We will figure this out, I promise. We’re pack, we have each other, and that’s enough. Understand?”

She squeezes her eyes shut, nodding as she clutches at his wrists. This is why she needed him. “Okay, but just—how? Do we bury the others and run? Beacon Hills isn’t safe, and there’s no way to explain this.”

Peter’s eyes burn bright blue. “I promised you we would get to the bottom of it, and we will. But _we do not run_ , you hear me? We have no idea who came after us, and there’s no guarantee they won’t follow. We don’t know for sure what happened to your sister. Beacon Hills is our territory. We have rights here that we won’t have anywhere else.”

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay. But how do we explain your miraculous recovery?”

He gives her a little smile, and it pulls at the scars on the right side of his face. “The first thing you’re going to do is ask for Dr. Matheson. He knows about the supernatural, and can help us sort this out. Chances are I’ll be ‘found’ at another hospital, and we’ll say that the body here was a misidentified John Doe.”

Something doesn’t add up. “Uncle Peter, that still leaves us short a burn victim.”

He smiles again, and this time, it’s dark with the violence she’s always known he carries. “You leave that to me.”

 

1 year after

Laura lays the snapdragons over her family’s grave marker. In the end, it had been less painful to just commission the one. “Hey, Mom.”

Her face twists as she sits on the ground. “Things have been . . . hard. Uncle Peter’s our acting Alpha, and for all that you’re probably still shitting bricks over that, he’s been really good to us.” She ducks her head, remembering full moon runs and the king size bed he bought for himself because they all end up in it more often than not. “I honestly think you’d be proud of him. He’s still Uncle Peter, but,” she swallows down tears. “He got Derek to go to therapy, and demanded extra reparations when we found out what Kate did to him. The Tribunal signed off on her execution.”

She loses the fight not to cry, still raw over what happened to her little brother. She knows her mom won’t judge. It takes a few minutes before she can speak again. “Cora’s still talking about her time with the faeries. Peter seems to handle it okay, but I know he’s just as scared as I am. It was three months before they gave her back, and I’m so relieved that she’s alive but I’m terrified that she’ll run back to them, or that they’ll take her again. Right now we’ve convinced her to wear an iron necklace, but Peter’s asking around to see if there’s more we can do.”

She’s quiet then, thinking over the last year as she traces the letters of her mother’s name. “I miss you, Mom. And I’m so sorry that I couldn’t be the Alpha you raised me to be. But I’m not sorry I saved Uncle Peter. I don’t think I could’ve survived losing all of you without him.”

She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a deep, shuddering breath, and stands. She presses a kiss to her fingers and lays her hand on the grave marker before she leaves. It’s her turn to pick up groceries, and then she needs to get Cora from gymnastics, and she knows Peter wants to sit down with her and try to talk about college again. He insists that it’s important she keeps moving forward, that life goes on. She knows he's right, but it's still hard.

But maybe tonight she can look at the brochures he got her.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come cry with me about the Hales on [Tumblr](https://queerfictionwriter.tumblr.com/).  


End file.
